One inherited the real estate empire built up by his father, Fred Trump, who by the 1970s was one of the richest people in America with a fortune of around $200 million. Fred made his way by profiteering from public contracts, and according to folk singer Woody Guthrie and the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, he was a racist who refused to rent to blacks. The wealth Donald Trump has accrued since taking over his father’s business is undoubtedly vast, but considerably less than he would have earned if he had put his money instead into a simple index fund. While he is not one of New York’s major players when it comes to the property market, he has continued his father’s real estate success, but has proven a firm failure in every other venture. His hotels and casinos in Atlantic City have four times gone bankrupt, and forays into professional football, airlines, and even Broadway have all flopped.
The other is a private school-educated former banker, who traded commodities at the London Metal Exchange long into a political career that only really started when he left the Conservatives in 1992, and joined UKIP in protest at the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. Nigel Farage led factions which subsequently ousted several UKIP leaders – including party founder and history professor Alan Sked, who was accused of being too intellectual, and resigned complaining that the party had been infiltrated by racist and far-right elements including the BNP – before finally taking the reins himself in 2006. On the rare occasions when he attempted to turn his fleeting attention span to anything other than immigration, he routinely proposed tax cuts for the wealthy, the reintroduction of grammar schools, the scrapping of statutory maternity pay and working time regulations, and the effective abolition of any measure that would curb or even consider climate change, which Farage effectively denies.
Despite vowing to deport all undocumented immigrants should he become President of the United States, confusion persists over the immigration history of Trump’s Slovenian wife. Melania Trump claims to have arrived in America in 1996, thanks to a H-1B temporary working visa. But a photo shoot suggests that she was modelling in the country as early as 1995, while her own remarks imply that she came on a short-term travel visa which would not have permitted any form of employment. Even if she did have a H-1B visa, this is a programme which Donald Trump has pledged to halt, citing ‘rampant’ abuse while stating ‘I will end forever the use of H-1B as a cheap labour programme, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first’.
As an MEP Nigel Farage appointed his German wife Kirsten as his parliamentary secretary, paying her £27,000 per year while campaigning for an end to freedom of movement along with Britain’s immediate withdrawal from the EU. Even though he has now resigned as UKIP leader, Farage continues to draw a salary of €100,000 a year, plus expenses, while remaining as an MEP.
A real estate mogul and a banker, crooks and racists who have campaigned resolutely against immigration yet would happily subvert their own proposals for the sake of a happy married life, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage make for strange but contented bedfellows. Farage recently appeared alongside the US presidential hopeful at a 15,000-strong rally in Jackson, Mississippi. He told Trump supporters ‘better get your walking boots on’, advised them over how to ‘smash the establishment’, and said he would not vote for Hillary Clinton ‘if you paid me’, despite his lack of citizenship making him anyway ineligible.
Trump in turn described Farage as the ‘brilliant’ architect of Brexit. And days after the rally, Farage furthered the bromance by comparing the limp-wristed Trump to the epitome of American political masculinity Ronald Reagan. The two men are undoubtedly odd, but it’s no surprise to see them sharing a stage so fondly. What is bizarre is that they have managed to convince millions to vote for them, millions that they somehow stand for them and represent their point of view.
